Abstract

The consideration of qualitative social approaches in public housing projects is not clear in the implementation process. Public agencies lack processes that incorporate explicit social criteria for assessing public housing projects. Therefore, the inclusion of social sustainability in early planning and decision-making is limited. This study presents a structural model explaining the fundamental interdependence of social criteria that govern socially sustainable housing projects for vulnerable populations in Chile. For this purpose, this research is based on a theoretical structural equation model (SEM) derived from applying a survey administered to 188 professionals involved in public housing development. This study validates the model by implementing five public housing projects in the Araucania Region and compared with other rating systems. A model of ten criteria and 33 indicators was validated. The overall results are consistent with the implementation of the ENVISION and CVS systems in consideration of social contributions. However, factors such as improvement in family economic capacity, housing committee involvement, and neighborhood functional integration are significant and not included in the other conventional rating systems.